New Delhi, India’s capital, is shivering in an extremely brutal winter cold that has killed dozens of homeless people and left other low-income inhabitants fighting to stay warm.
The 20 million residents of the enormous megacity are used to year-round weather extremes, from scorching summer heat to torrential downpours and thick, deadly pollution in the fall.
Even yet, the bitter cold and blustery rains this month have been a nightmare for many, with New Delhi experiencing its coldest January day in nearly a decade on Tuesday.
Recent data on homelessness in the city is hard to come by, however according to India’s 2011 census, some 47,000 people were sleeping rough in the city.
Activists, on the other hand, argue that this is a massive understatement.
According to official data, the city’s homeless shelters can only hold roughly 9,300 individuals.
Sunil Kumar Aledia of the Centre for Holistic Development, who has spent decades working with New Delhi’s homeless population, estimates that 176 people have died as a result of exposure to the cold this year.
For the most of January, India’s weather agency told local media that maximum daily temperatures in New Delhi were two to six degrees Celsius below usual.
The high temperature on January 25 was 12.1 degrees Celsius (54 degrees Fahrenheit), the lowest January high since 2013 and 10 degrees below the month’s long-term average.
For the past few weeks, the lows have been in the single digits.
